So I have been quiet again recently. Taking a lot of stock.

Gabby got her place at our local primary school and as much as I’d love to believe she is still my baby, this girl could not be more excited to go to big school like her precious Immy Squidge. She is ready.

So, I have been wondering, what is there for me now?

I have been feeling very angsty and have established with my therapist that actually, I might be excited to have less to do, to look after myself in the empty hours. That had to be OK. For that to happen, I have to let it be OK.

Then, a job advert seeking a Teaching Assistant came up at my girls’ school.

And for the last 2 weeks, I have been in turmoil.

Being a teaching assistant is hands down the best (paid) job I ever had. Had I not needed more money for that pesky mortgage, I would have done it forever. Let’s be honest, no other job is going to fit in better with my two young ladies either.

I (that is, Jo) would love to get back to the chaos of the classroom.

But, the things I have learnt about myself these last 2 years can no longer be ignored. I need time for physio and massage and maybe even writing, so that I can come to understand myself. So, with the idea of the school job in my head, I have been panicking. Wondering which parts of me will have to give for the sake of a payslip.

Which is not to say the money would not be helpful. Bringing in some money would help me feel like I am sharing in my husband’s burden as a provider. It would give me purpose in helping us all once my girls are at school.

Yet, I let the time pass, because I couldn’t land squarely on a “Yes, let’s do this” because how would everything I do now get done? The stuff I have to do, like the washing, grocery shopping, running my girls’ logistics, school runs, birthdays, Christmas, social lives.

It doesn’t sound like much. I mean, I used to have a 27 hours/week job, a toddler and a degree to earn on top of all the above. I did it with a lot of help of course, but I did it, so how is it my life feels so full now?

The answer is: prioritising my mental health. I go to counselling once a fortnight now, I read endlessly, I must have a weekly massage, I journal. It all takes time and it’s time I now feel a need to protect because I am not healed yet. I am a long way down the road and I don’t want to be at home forever. I don’t.

So why could I not sleep when I thought about returning to work in school?

Well, because, for one, I struggle to walk up the front steps of the school because there is no banister. I have been struggling for nearly 3 months and haven’t said anything. Of course I should say something, but I didn’t want to set myself apart as different. I am fiercely independent and I want to keep it that way as long as I possibly can. Plus, if I made a fuss, wouldn’t that preclude me from being able to work there perhaps? I didn’t – and still don’t – want to lose the option. I appreciate this school community and everything they are trying to do in educating my two precious girls.

For two, what if the workload, once combined, was too much? What if I stopped taking care of myself? That would make me a worse parent too. Was the money going to be enough to assauge that?

Truthfully, no. I knew this. This was why time was slipping away.

Thirdly, my feet are still very painful. I don’t honestly know, given that I am walking on just the big toe of my weak, left foot, that this is a body up to 7 hours of work a day, before I can see to my kids, myself, or my home. (And, being honest, that is not the true order in which I would do those things, I am always going to be bottom of the list and I don’t think that’s going to do anyone any good.)

Yet still, I couldn’t shake the idea that the job would bring me joy.

Then, the construction barriers went up at the end of our street, courtesy of the crew replacing water pipes under the pavement.

That did it.

You see, I was avoiding taking the girls to school in the other direction because the church on the corner by the school gate is being converted into flats and the road is completely blocked. I am not the type of person safe enough to walk into the road whilst clutching the two little hands of the the most important people in my world.

So there was only one way to travel to school from our front door and now, no. And I was enraged. Why did something so simple, so expected in everyday life have to be so damn hard. I would glower at the front steps of the school that I couldn’t access as I took the girls past.

And then Gabby’s nursery class announced a parent afternoon in the forest school and I felt that dread about needing to go through the office, up the dreaded inaccessible front steps. I didn’t want to have to do it, but I am a mum first and foremost and I am not going to let my daughter down, otherwise what benefit is there to me being the stay-at-home parent?

I didn’t want to be kept outside of these opportunities anymore. If I believed my daughters would deserve better (I do!) then I have to accept that I deserve better too.

So today, I took the accessibility bull by the horns.

At drop-off, I confessed to Gabby’s nursery teacher that, whilst I wanted to be part of the forest school afternoon, I could no longer pretend I could access the school from the front steps, as normally seemed expected. So, I needed, I deserved, another way in. As it turned out, this time, they were expecting us to come across the playground from the usual drop-off/pick-up point, which I can do.

Emboldened, I approached the deputy head, who had opened the gate to admit the parents and afternoon class. “I cannot access the front at all now. I used to grab the planters, but you’ve covered them now.”

“That was Easter!” she replied. “I’m so sorry you’ve struggled so long. We just don’t know what’s wrong with this old building until someone says, but I promise you, it’s an easy fix! We can always open the gate for you across the playground, there’s enough of us here to do that.”

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and told Kev again that I still hadn’t talked myself out of applying for the job in the school.

“What was the biggest barrier?”

“Access and they’re going to take care of that for a parent, so they will have to do the same if I work there right? And I’d have to get the job first, so it can’t hurt to try right?”

So I came home and tried to boot up the application form. But the job listing had disappeared. For half a second, I was disappointed, but then, I got to breathe another sigh of relief.

This was it. It was gone. That was not my doing. I finally got to say what I needed to say re: access to feel seen and validated. That was important enough on its own. I wouldn’t have done it had the pipes at the bottom of my street not been ripped out. I’d never have landed on the side of trying for the job at all, still glowering at the inaccessible front steps whenever I passed the school.

The job being gone validates the true wish of my inner child. I want to look after me. I want to lose some weight so my hips don’t hurt, to go to aqua aerobics, drive about and read books, to be able to turn up for parent afternoons whenever my girls want me to.

And that’s OK.